


Carry the one

by jetbradley



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron 2.0
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetbradley/pseuds/jetbradley
Summary: Two users, two programs, and an ISO disagree about how to multiply a number by two.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Carry the one

“Hey Sam.”

Sam didn’t look up from his own laptop as Jet called him from his own. “Hm?”

“How do you do 198 times two?”

The question, from out of left field, got Sam to look up. “What?”

“Like. What goes on in your head when you do 198 times two?”

He caught Quorra eyeing Sam curiously from her own spot on the couch as Sam shifted in his seat. He leaned on his elbow and brought his other hand to his face. “I guess, like. That’s like. 200 + 160 + 16, right? So you have 360 plus sixteen, that comes out to 376?”

“Huh.”

Quorra seemed satisfied with that answer. Or maybe she didn’t care; she’d returned to her book. Next to her, between her and Jet, Mercury was absolutely unreadable. Across the room in a recliner, though, Ram was making a face at the User. Sam turned back to his own work, unaware. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Jet shifted. “I saw a post online about it, and I realized… I think I do my mental math weird.”

“Well if it gets the right answer, that’s what matters, right? How do you do it?”

“I’m sorry,” Ram interjected. “Does _no one care_ that 198 times two is 396?”

Sam looked up again like Ram had caught him stealing cookies. “What?”

“It’s 396.”

Jet squinted at his screen, reading the Facebook post again. Mercury spoke from next to him. “He’s right, it’s 396.”

Jet nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not a math teacher, guys.” Sam threw up his hands. “But Jet. How do you do it?”

Jet shifted uncomfortably, very aware that the eyes of both programs, the ISO, and his brother were now directed at him. “Well, you have 190, that’s 180 plus ten. 18 is 9 times 2, 9 times 4 is 36, so you take 360 and add the ten, but it’s ten times two now so it’s 380, and then you have… It was 8, right? So you add 16. 396.”

Sam stared at Jet, somewhere between scrutinizing and completely lost. “What. The fuck.”

“Can’t you just left shift it?”

He turned to Ram, who was fidgeting with a pencil in his chair. _Could he even use a pencil?_ “What?”

“Left shifting,” Mercury nodded. “Like with binary. That’s how I would do it.”

“Right. With two it’s easy.” Ram put a foot up on his knee. “198 in binary is 11000110. Left shift it but keep the leftmost bit, you get 110001100. And that in decimal is 396.”

Sam and Jet looked at each other with equal amounts of bewilderment, and then back to Ram, who was looking at them expectantly. “What, you’ve never used a left shift before?”

“Ram,” Sam said, “I know what a fucking left shift is, but why would you-”

“He’s _right,”_ Mercury said, her voice nearing a shout. “It’s less operations than what either of you were doing.”

“I’m sorry, Mercury, but my brain doesn’t work like a C compiler-”

“Users don’t.” Jet pushed up his glasses and shut his eyes. “Users don’t think in binary. We think in decimal. Period. To go to and from binary, we’d have to do more operations than just keeping everything in decimal.”

“To be honest, Jet, that sounds like a personal problem.”

He shot Mercury an exasperated look. She simply raised her eyebrows back at him. Jet shook his head, defeated, and returned to his laptop.

“What about you, Quorra?” Ram asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet. How would you do it?”

“Oh, me?” She looked up from her book. “I would simply add 198 to itself. But I do think your method is… Clever.”

Ram seemed satisfied with that answer. He went back to drawing, or whatever it was he was even doing with his pencil and notepad. (So he could use a pencil.) Jet looked over to Sam, who looked back at him like he’d just witnessed a train crash, and gave an apologetic shrug.


End file.
